Daily Life

Our son spent two years teaching in Korea. He's back home (for now), and has had fun cooking for us now and then. Tonight he prepared a typical Korea restaurant meal. It's cooked at the table; as parts are finished, people take them right out of the pan, with chopsticks, of course. (I used a spoon. I should probably attempt to master those pesky chopsticks.)

He said we were missing some key ingredients, but hubby and I couldn't tell, and we thought it was delicious. Sometimes one puts some of all the parts (rice from a separate bowl, and from the pot one takes vegies and meat as desired), rolls it up inside a lettuce leaf, and eats it all in one bite. He said he had never seen anyone eat it in bites like I did.

At the end, when most of the pot ingredients are eaten up, the rest of the rice is put in there, an egg is added, and "fried rice" is created. Yum! What a fun, end-of-meal delight!

In other family news: my mother is out of the hospital and out of rehab and back in her own apartment. She's much happier there. She's doing pretty well - as well as can be expected when one is 95 and has various ailments from which to try to recover.

Today I sewed along with my new, regular group which meets every Wednesday. It's a long drive from home, but fun to have a group with whom to sew every week.

I finished assembling this quilt, made of a hodge podge of donated and orphan blocks.

I also finished the binding on this baby quilt which is for my newest great-niece.

Catching Up to the 20th Century

That's right, folks. I'm catching up to the gadgets from the 1990s. I'm on the cutting edge.

Several years ago my SIL gave me a blender for Christmas. It has been here all this time, waiting for me to use it. To be honest, I tried, but it scared me -- so loud, and I thought for sure I was doing something wrong.

Finally I decided I wanted to make smoothies, so I pulled it out and shut my eyes, and turned it on. Voila! Smoothies! And my fear of the blender has vanished! Yay! I know there have been a zillion gadgets created since the blender, all much more efficient, smooth, quiet, etc. But I'm slow to take on the new stuff in some ways. So, today I'm celebrating the discovery of my blender and the ability to make smoothies.

This one is made with yogurt, strawberries, blackberries, milk and ice. I'm not sure I like blackberries in my smoothie. I'll have to keep trying different combinations. I'm nowhere near those modern green things that people drink. So far I'm still at the "it feels and tastes like an ice cream concoction" stage.

I can hardly wait for peaches to be in season!

A Postponed Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving this year we decided not to do our usual 150 mile trip to my sister's house. We had planned to stay home, just the two of us, and have a yummy dinner cooked by my husband (pot roast)! Yum. I said I'd do the pies, but I ended up buying them. I'm a lazier cook than ever before.

On Wednesday my mother-in-law landed in the hospital, having terrible abdomen and back pains. They decided it was a gall bladder issue, and it needed to come out. These days that is a pretty routine procedure, but not for my MIL due to many complicating factors. Any kind of surgery for her is risky.

Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, we postponed our dinner plans and stood watch over Mother-in-Law in the hospital. Well, my husband did. I was going to go later, but ... it was snowing, and I just didn't like the thought of going out in snow and possible ice. So I stayed home and sewed, with the intent of jumping in my car and joining the watch if I was needed. (I never was.)

MIL's surgery was a success; now she has a longish recovery to look forward to, because of all the other issues that need to be watched carefully. What a relief! She came through another crisis! She's is one tough cookie. Hopefully the recovery won't be too bad, although she was in a fair amount of pain after the surgery. I will visit her in the hospital after she is fully awake and will know I'm there.

Meanwhile, I finally got back to my sewing machine. I have not spent much time sewing lately, so it felt great to get back to it. I finished this top:

It is for Wrap Them in Love. They gave me one of the fabrics. I have made two tops for them from the pieces they sent. Did I show you the first one? I might not have. I used the Tahoe pattern and am not as excited about it, but I'll let you see it:

I also spent some time sewing together some selvedge edges. I was planning to make some pot holders. As I worked, I decided I had a good start on a quilt, which surprised me. I never would have purposely saved selvedge edges for an actual quilt.. but it's not the first time my potential pot holders turned into a quilt. I'd rather have a quilt any day (being such a reluctant cook and all.. who needs pot holders??)

You can see it's going to be a while before I have enough blocks for an actual quilt. These are 10-inch blocks.

Tomorrow I have more sewing in my future. Hooray! (I still don't know when our postponed dinner will happen... hubby has an all-day event tomorrow.) Have a great weekend everyone.

Quilting in the North Woods

Nine women went to the cabin and quilted for four days. We had a great time, great food, great laughs!

the beautiful lake

the mess we made inside

some stuff I made

more stuff I made (The pie is in a cake-pan, because I didn't think the cabin had two pie tins, so we had a strawberry-rhubarb pie-cake; I was wrong, though.. there were two pie tins there!)

We ice-dyed!

C and I modeled our free "Two Men and a Truck" t-shirts (Quilting in Minnesota's North Woods with Two Men and a Truck")

How to Make Spaghetti Out of Nothing

I was craving spaghetti - one of my favorite comfort foods. I had planned to make it for a few days and finally got my chance. Browned some ground beef along with onion. Decided to go the easy/lazy route and use a jar of spaghetti sauce. Oops.. none on the shelf. That's OK. I can make it from tomato sauce and other such ingredients, the way my mother taught me. Well, look at that, we had no tomato sauce at all!

Hmmm... now what? I REALLY wanted some spaghetti. Oh, I found a jar of picante sauce. I decided to use that. But.. that's a little weird. What else? I still was hoping to find a can of tomato sauce - no such luck. So I did have one large can of diced tomatoes. I dumped in some of the tomatoes and the juice from that can.

Then I added a few spices to try to convince it that it really was spaghetti sauce.

For spaghetti, I used another pasta: penne pasta which I love.

I thought we had run out of parmesan cheese (not the real stuff but the powder stuff from a jar, the lazy route again)... but it was my lucky day! We had a new jar.

It was quite delicious, actually. There were no leftovers!

Saturday Note About Books & Other Stuff

I meant to post yesterday in case some of you came to see my Friday Books post. I don't have a book report this week. I'm reading a good book but have not devoted much time to it, so I'm not done. Instead of reading I have been doing a lot of sewing.

I completed this quilt:

I made this quilt top, very similar to others I have made from scraps. I like this process:

I quilted another top late Friday night, but I couldn't find the fabric I want for the binding, so it's not 100% done yet. I'm hoping to get more quilting done as I always have a stack of tops waiting to be finished.

On Friday I had a fun lunch with BL and L who recently moved here from California. I have known them for years via online stuff and a few random in-person meets. Nice to have them in Minnesota now! Can you say "I love lefse??" After lunch we hit a new fabric shop. BL went nuts in the button bin.

Laboring on Labor Day Weekend

I got a lot done over our long weekend! I was doing the FUN kind of labor. Most of it was in the sewing room. These are my most recent finishes... a quilted bag and another quilt for Wrap a Smile:

Last night I made brownies! (I know.. after a pie, we didn't really need brownies, but I only made a half recipe. Baking sweets is my favorite kind of kitchen work.)

And as a recap, here is what else I did over the weekend (not pictured: several loads of laundry, a little bit of reading, and one gargantuan nap)--

Could You Eat This Cake?

This is a cake that was part of our pot luck at work... a Halloween-y cake, I guess. Would you be able to eat this? I could not! It looked way too real.

Minnesota Quilters Show, 2013

I had a great time at the MQ show yesterday. There were a lot more modern quilts than I remember from the past, and I loved them! Great show. I also had one of the best food days I've had in a long time. Friends and I had lunch at Bellisio's Italian Restaurant in Duluth, Minnesota. If you ever get a chance, go there! It's in Canal Park near Grandma's. It was a fabulous place, food was great, and service equally great. It was one of the highlights of the trip!

Here are some photos... hope you enjoy seeing a small fraction of the quilt show beauty:

Inspired by the mosque in Cordoba, Spain.

This quilt was based on a photo of the Charles River in Prague.

We helped take down one of the exhibits, that's why we're laden with duffle bags.